As many people know, I have read comicbooks since I was a child. I can remember my brother Mitch subscribing to Marvel’s “Daredevil” (during the Frank Miller-era) and can recall titles that I read such as “Team America” and “Star Wars“. The two titles that I got into the most though, were G.I. Joe and The Uncanny X-Men.
I had tons of G.I. Joe toys and read many of the Larry Hama-penned comicbook adventures, from the first over-sized issue, past the “silent issue” #21, and many stories beyond that. Years later, while in college, I even got to introduce myself to Mr. Hama at the Marvel Holiday Party, when I was interning at Marvel. Unfortunately the person who took my photo with Mr. Hama did a pretty poor job.
The comicbook series that has held onto me the longest though, was The Uncanny X-men. I can even tell you what was the first issue I read; it was Uncanny X-men #193, by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr./Dan Green. I’ve read that book pretty regularly for years since then
The point I’m getting at here is that I have a long-term affection for sequential art. I wanted to be a comicbook artist from about 5th or 6th grade all the way to me college-years. I created my own characters and was a total Marvel Zombie. Even though my career path has led to photography, I still read and re-read many of my comicbooks. In 2008, I tried to discern if Milwaukee was home to any professional comicbook artists/creators and this led me to Rich Koslowski.
Rich Koslowski is a comicbook “creator” in the full sense of the word. He writes, pencils, inks, works on corporation-owned characters, has become well-known for his OWN characters, and has had some interesting, original graphic novels published also (“Three Fingers” is very interesting and “The King” was also quite impressive, and “The List” is seasonally-appropriate!). Rich grew up in Milwaukee and lives here still! He was generous enough to let me visit, chat for awhile, and make his portrait. When I was by, Rich was busy inking some pages from an upcoming issue of Archie, a book he has worked on for years.
I hope you enjoy these photos, and please, if it interests you–buy some of Rich’s comicbooks!
Tech: the portrait was shot with a 240mm lens on an old Calumet 4×5 camera, the other photos were made with a Leica R8+DMR.
